


And Then There Were Six

by bellabee



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Five Centric, Gen, Minor Swearing, also slight gore, in the mention of his death, it also talks about the siblings dynamic a bit, it's only mentioned in like a sentence tho, major character death bc ben, mostly about what happened the day he disappeared and what happened afterwards, so if that isn't your cup of tea beware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 15:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellabee/pseuds/bellabee
Summary: The Hargreeves siblings were once as close as ever, connected by a freakish birth and special powers right out of a comic book. However, this all went downhill once one of the siblings, Five, suddenly disappeared from their lives. Nothing was the same after he left, and nothing seemed to get better once he was gone.





	And Then There Were Six

The day that Five disappeared started off just like any other. At around 6am, Grace started to wake up all of the kids in order of rank, the same thing she did every morning. Luther by telling the already awake boy to get ready, Diego by coming over to stroke the hair out of his face until he started to stir, Allison by shaking her shoulder, Klaus by coaxing him with the promise of breakfast, Ben by calling his name from the doorway, and Vanya by simply knocking on her door thrice. Five, however, insisted that he was too old to be woken by their mom and set his own alarm every morning. There was plenty of squabbling over who got to use the bathrooms first and yelling at Klaus for using the wrong toothbrush, but as soon as Grace rang the bell they were all running down the stairs and walking into the dining room.  


They walked in to the sound of the news going through the radio as it did every morning, something which they had become accustomed to. The seven kids walked to their usual spots; Luther, Diego and Five standing on one side, Allison, Klaus, and Ben on the other, and Vanya at the head. Reginald came in a moment later, dressed in his usual suit and his monocle in place over his eye. He walked to his spot at the opposite head, staring straight ahead at Vanya for a moment before uttering a simple, “Sit.”  


The kids all ate their oatmeal, the same breakfast they’d been eating for 13 years now which had over time been adapted the way each kid liked. Luther’s had a bit of added nuts and granola, Diego had cinnamon and honey, Allison had strawberries and cream, Klaus had chocolate chips, Five liked his plain, Ben had his with bananas, and Vanya had mixed berries added in. Reginald hadn’t been happy with the changes at first, but after Grace convinced him that the kids having breakfasts they liked would make them work better, he relented.  


After they were all excused from breakfast, they dispersed to do their own training. Luther worked on lifting in the same room Diego threw his knives and Allison whispered how she heard a rumor that they could lift more and throw straighter. Ben was forced to practice controlling his tentacles, as much as he didn’t want to, in a separate room so he wouldn’t accidentally hurt his siblings. Meanwhile, Five worked on going further with his spatial jumps while Klaus snuck off to smoke weed to try and get rid of the ghosts and Vanya was left alone to practice her violin.  


Lunch went on as usual, and afterwards the kids were left to their own devices. Luther and Allison listened to a record in her room, Diego got Klaus to play darts with him, Ben read a book while Vanya practiced violin in the same room, and Five continued to practice his jumps. Soon enough they heard the final bell of the day. They all stopped what they were doing, putting stuff down before rushing downstairs for dinner.  


They lined up in the same order as always, waiting for Reginald to instruct them to sit before doing so and tucking into their food. A Herr Carlson record was playing, as it was every Tuesday evening at 6pm. The kids found it less than enjoyable, to say the least, but they knew better than to say anything about it and upset their father. All seemed to be going the same as usual with Klaus rolling a joint, Diego carving into his chair and Ben reading while he ate until Five decided to slam his knife into the wood of the table and startle everyone.  


Reginald had simply set down his glass of wine and addressed the child with an air of contempt. Despite Five being told that he wasn’t allowed to speak at the dinner table, a rule that he had known since he was old enough to understand rules, he spoke up anyways. He brought up his desire to time travel, something that was well known to get on Reginald’s nerves. Normally Five would drop it after his request was dismissed, but that night he was determined.  


He kept pushing despite Reginald’s explanation and denial, only resulting in upsetting himself. Vanya tried to silently urge her brother to drop it, but Five dismissed her warning and kept going anyways. Eventually he had gotten so fed up that he ran off, something the kids never did until they were dismissed. Vanya was inclined to run after him and stop him, but she knew better than to leave without permission and she didn’t want to be punished. Besides, he would only be gone for a few hours at most, right?  


As the siblings, as well as the world soon found out, Five was not gone for just a few hours. They had all expected Five to come back that night and give Reginald a half-assed apology before going to bed and for things to be back to normal by the next morning, but it was anything but. The, now only six, siblings kept out hope that he was just getting away for a few days and that he’d be back soon, but their spirits were slowly but surely breaking. Reginald kept telling them how he was gone and he shut them down when they tried to argue otherwise.  


Days, weeks, and then months passed with still no sign of the fifth Hargreeves child. For a while the kids would take turns sneaking out of the house to look for them, Grace helping them get out undetected. They would search the streets and alleyways and abandoned houses, but there was still no sign of their brother. That didn’t stop the kids at first, though, as they felt that Five would soon come back once he had made his point. They put up missing kids posters and got the news to run a story on him and everything, but nobody had seen him.  


Eventually the kids all gave up, resigned to a life without one of their brothers. Vanya, however, always made sure to leave three peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches around the house every night. One by the front door, one by the back, and one on his bedroom nightstand. She had thought that maybe one day he would finally come back, and when he did he was bound to be hungry so he would need his favorite pick me up. She left them for years, holding on to a shred of hope that one morning she would wake up to see that Five was home and had eaten them. He never was though, and Pogo was always left to clean the sandwiches up and toss them in the trash come morning.  


Reginald had a portrait made of Five under the guise of it being a remembrance of his lost soldier. The now teens saw right through that, knowing that the underlying meaning of it was a message to always listen to Reginald or you’d end up like Five; gone and forgotten. Every day the siblings were told to look at the portrait and reflect, but all it managed was to make them miss their brother and resent their father.  


Things were never the same once Five was gone. Seven children had become six and to them it just wasn’t right. Everyone, excluding Reginald, missed the snarky 13 year old who was too confident in his abilities for his own good. The six would be together and things would seem fine, but every one of them knew that something was missing and that the hole in their hearts would never be replaced. They still celebrated their birthdays together, each year the collective wish when blowing out the candles being that Five would return.  


Grace and Pogo suffered as well, as Five was an important part of their lives. Grace may have been just a robotic nanny at first, but she had grown into so much more. She grew to care for the kids as if she was their actual mother, and though she and Five were never particularly close he was still her son. She lost one of her children on that fateful Tuesday evening and she mourned the loss like any mother would. Often times she could be found staring at his portrait late into the night, talking to it as if Five could respond.  


Pogo had helped take care of the kids since he was a baby and he cared about them all deeply. When Five disappeared he was left to comfort the kids along with Grace, as Reginald clearly wasn’t going to do anything. He held Ben and Vanya as they cried, as those two had always been the closest with the lost brother. He helped them all come to terms with him being gone, all while dealing with the loss of the child himself. He was more of a dad to them than Reginald ever was and he felt the pain of Five being gone just as any good father would.  


Eventually the number being down to six became the norm and the kids lost all their hope. They continued to go on and complete missions, adjusting to fighting without one of their strongest parts. They had a new dynamic and learned how to defeat the bad guys without Five’s help. Then the day that became tied for the worst day of their lives came up out of nowhere.  


It was looking like a regular mission and all was going as planned until something went terribly wrong. Ben somehow lost control and there was nothing anybody could do to help. They were all left staring in horror as their brother was torn apart by his own body and by a power he had never asked to have and had wished to suppress. Unbeknownst to them, in Ben’s final moments he wasn’t thinking about how he would never get to see any of them again. Instead, he thought about the fact that he thought he would finally be able to see Five again.  


With Ben gone, everything was practically over. The Hargreeves had now lost two sons due to the powers they possessed, and nobody wanted to make that a third. The Umbrella Academy disbanded leaving Luther as the only soldier left. Allison left to pursue a career in acting, Diego wanted to become a police officer, Klaus fell deeper into his drug habit, and Vanya just wanted to get away from it all. The once close siblings stopped talking aside from the collective ‘Happy Birthday’ text on October 1st and a ‘Merry Christmas’ come the holidays.  


Though Five and Ben had been gone for years at that point, the last five siblings did everything they did for them. Luther and Diego wanted to fight in their honor, Allison wanted to make them proud, Klaus still had Ben but the drugs helped him stop thinking about Five all the time and Vanya wanted their stories to be told as well as her’s.  


Vanya’s book had a section dedicated to her two brothers who were taken too soon. She told the story of how she had never truly lost hope that he would come back, even to that day. In the back of her mind there was always the naive thought that he would finally come back and all would be okay again once she had her brother who she was once the closest with back.  


The siblings eventually stopped talking altogether, most not even coming to Allison’s wedding. The only one in attendance was Diego as Luther was on the moon, Klaus was high off his ass, and Vanya had just released her book so they weren’t exactly on speaking terms at that moment. It wasn’t for another 17 years that the sibling were together again, though not for the best of circumstances.  


Reginald Hargreeves had been pronounced dead, and the remaining five made their way back to their first homes as soon as they could. Luther returned from the moon, Allison left LA, Diego and Vanya finally came back, and Klaus mostly came for a place to sleep. Little did they know, their five would soon be back up to six.  


Within hours of their return, a storm came seemingly out of nowhere. They all went to investigate, only to find that this was no storm after all. Mere moments later somebody was coming out of it, though it wasn’t just anybody. This was _Five_ , the long lost brother. The first sibling they had ever lost and who they mostly believed to be dead. He was alive, and not only was he alive, but he was _here_ , back at the Umbrella Academy at last.  


Along with the confusion, the siblings were secretly thrilled. They had their brother back after 17 despairing years, and though he was still 13 he was alive and well. Deep down, they had a secret hope that things could finally get back to normal. That they’d be able to push aside their differences and become as close as they once were.  


But then things weren’t normal, they were anything but, in fact. Everyone, including and especially Five, was acting weird and it seemed like everything that could possibly happen was happening at once. The end of the world was fast approaching and they were all thrown into trying to stop it before they could even comprehend what it was. They failed to stop it and were practically hopeless before Five had his radical idea.  


They were going back in time, all together, and none of them had any clue what to expect. They didn’t know whether they’d be able to stop it at all, whether they would be stuck in the past reliving the past 17 years, whether they would get Ben back as well, or if this would even work at all. They had no choice but to try though, and hope that they’d be able to fix it this time around. Besides, what else could possibly go wrong? 


End file.
